Adaptive virtual autobalancing for a rigid rotor with unknown mass imbalance supported by magnetic bearings

The objective of this paper is to describe an imbalance compensation scheme for a rigid rotor supported by magnetic bearings that performs on-line identification of rotor imbalance and allows imbalance cancellation under varying speed of rotation. The proposed approach supplements existing magnetic bearing controls which are assumed to achieve elastic suspension of the rotor. By adopting a physical model of imbalance and utilizing measurements of the spin rate, the proposed algorithm allows the computation of the necessary corrective forces regardless of variations in the spin rate. Convergence of the algorithm is analyzed for single-plane balancing, and is supported by simulation in single-and two-plane balancing, as well as by experimental results in single-plane implementation.